December 5, 1984—Sylvester Stallone and Mickey Rourke’s loss turned out to be Eddie Murphy’s gain, as the former Saturday Night Live regular reaped box-office gold with a script that the two other stars rejected.
With $15.2 million in domestic revenues in its opening weekend, Beverly Hills Cop was well launched toward a worldwide gross of $316 million. At 23 years old, Murphy had reached his zenith as the profane, street-smart funnyman of the 1980s. He’s been trying to catch this lightning in a jar since then, mostly unsuccessfully.
The action-comedy took seven years from initial pitch to Christmas blockbuster. In 1977, producer Don Simpson—then at Paramount—and screenwriter Danilo Bach traded ideas for a scenario.
That first idea—a cop from East L.A. transferring to Beverly Hills—went nowhere. Simpson and boss Michael Eisner liked a different take that Bach had on the concept: the cop would now be from an East Coast city, turning Beverly Hills upside down to avenge the killing of a friend—kind of like Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat, but with scenes on Rodeo Drive rather than in a corrupt city ruled by the mob.
When Bach moved on, Daniel Petrie Jr. then injected some much-needed humor into the script. For the next couple of years, the project would languish in development hell, scrutinized by one star before ultimately being discarded. First Mickey Rourke circled around it before moving on, then it was Sylvester Stallone’s turn.
Once Sly got hold of the script, he felt the ol’ Orson Welles mojo—you know, that whole actor-writer-director-producer thing—unsettling him, as it did a lot in the decade after he made Rocky, so he unpacked his typewriter and got to work. Not surprisingly, the humor so evident in Petrie’s version now seeped out. (If you want an idea of what Stallone’s script was like, consider his film Cobra, and the line that inspired--if that's the right word--its marketing campaign: “You’re the disease, and I’m the cure.”)
The best thing that happened to film comedy in the 1980s was that Stallone also lost interest in this project. Now the script made its way into Murphy’s hands.
Somewhere I read that screenwriters tailor their work for the talents of specific stars. (Thus, if you know that Bing Crosby will be playing your priest, you concoct scenes in which he’ll be called on to sing.) It’s nearly impossible, all these years later, to imagine anyone else but Murphy at this point in his career, in all his fun-loving insouciance, tackling Axel Foley.
With $15.2 million in domestic revenues in its opening weekend, Beverly Hills Cop was well launched toward a worldwide gross of $316 million. At 23 years old, Murphy had reached his zenith as the profane, street-smart funnyman of the 1980s. He’s been trying to catch this lightning in a jar since then, mostly unsuccessfully.
The action-comedy took seven years from initial pitch to Christmas blockbuster. In 1977, producer Don Simpson—then at Paramount—and screenwriter Danilo Bach traded ideas for a scenario.
That first idea—a cop from East L.A. transferring to Beverly Hills—went nowhere. Simpson and boss Michael Eisner liked a different take that Bach had on the concept: the cop would now be from an East Coast city, turning Beverly Hills upside down to avenge the killing of a friend—kind of like Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat, but with scenes on Rodeo Drive rather than in a corrupt city ruled by the mob.
When Bach moved on, Daniel Petrie Jr. then injected some much-needed humor into the script. For the next couple of years, the project would languish in development hell, scrutinized by one star before ultimately being discarded. First Mickey Rourke circled around it before moving on, then it was Sylvester Stallone’s turn.
Once Sly got hold of the script, he felt the ol’ Orson Welles mojo—you know, that whole actor-writer-director-producer thing—unsettling him, as it did a lot in the decade after he made Rocky, so he unpacked his typewriter and got to work. Not surprisingly, the humor so evident in Petrie’s version now seeped out. (If you want an idea of what Stallone’s script was like, consider his film Cobra, and the line that inspired--if that's the right word--its marketing campaign: “You’re the disease, and I’m the cure.”)
The best thing that happened to film comedy in the 1980s was that Stallone also lost interest in this project. Now the script made its way into Murphy’s hands.
Somewhere I read that screenwriters tailor their work for the talents of specific stars. (Thus, if you know that Bing Crosby will be playing your priest, you concoct scenes in which he’ll be called on to sing.) It’s nearly impossible, all these years later, to imagine anyone else but Murphy at this point in his career, in all his fun-loving insouciance, tackling Axel Foley.
Coming on the heels of 48 Hours and Trading Places, Murphy’s latest triumph had many fans, myself very much included, believing he could do no wrong. The next few years of increasingly unoriginal, lamely constructed star vehicles for him (The Golden Child, Coming to America, Harlem Nights) gradually stripped us of this illusion.
In the years since, Murphy has attempted to recapture his magic with pictures that were not bad (Boomerang, The Distinguished Gentleman, Bowfinger) and others that turned out to be staggering bombs (Vampire in Brooklyn, The Adventures of Pluto Nash). Sadly, his career has come to resemble, in one respect, that of the far-less-talented Stallone, in that he’s looked to one potential franchise after another before releasing progressively sorry sequels (think of the pitiful progeny of 48 Hours, The Nutty Professor, and Dr. Doolittle). The shame of it is that he can still be a wildly inventive comedian, as he demonstrated sporadically in parts of Comedy to America, the Nutty Professor films, and his hilarious voice-over as Donkey in the Shrek films.
Now, it appears, the same syndrome--beating a good thing into the ground--is happening with Beverly Hills Cop. A year ago, the star committed to the fourth installment of the adventures of Axel Foley. A month and a half ago, however, came the news that a new writer had been brought on board to re-tool the script.
This being Hollywood, nobody knows what to make of this. I’m sure Murphy hopes it’s a reprise of the creative destruction that preceded his triumph 25 years ago. But the possibility, by no means small, exists that all parties concerned have gone to the creative well once too often.
They never know how to leave well enough alone, do they?
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